Scotland and the Scots

In these pages, as a little bit of light relief from the serious business
of promoting our main activities, we would like to offer you a short
guided tour around our home country in the company of Glasgow based
author, James Loomis.

But first, a little of the background to the country of which we Scots
tend to be so proud.

A history of Scotland from time immemorial

On May 6 1999, the people of Scotland, some 5 million of them, had
they all gone to the ballot boxes, took part in an historic event; the
election of the first Scottish Parliament for nearly 300 years. Scotland
had formerly been governed by a British eclectic following the decision
of the Scots Parliament in 1707, to join with its larger English counterpart
and thus create the hitherto unitary government system.

The country's earliest known inhabitants, nomads from Celtic central
Europe, had migrated to the previously ice-bound territory and founded
iron and bronze age tribal or clan systems. A number of these units
amalgamated into major groupings such Caledonii (in recent times the
ancient name Caledonia has passed into romantic poetry as a synonym
for Scotland) before eventually becoming the nation-state known as Pictland.
The Picts, probably the true aboriginals of present day Scotland, first
made the history books somewhere around 300AD when Roman writer Eumenious,
referred to the inhabitants of Northern Briton as Picts.

When Kenneth Mac Alpin conquered the Picts in 850AD and created the
kingdom of the Picts and the Scots the region was known as Alba. Duan
Abanach, Scotland's earliest Gaelic poem gives the country this name
in the 11th century and it still remains the Gaelic term for Scotland
to this day. All that probably needs saying now is that the Lowland
administration finally introduced "Scotland" into the new language while
Alba was relegated to the title of Royal Dukedom around 1400.

Climatically, the country is fortunate in that it enjoys temperate
conditions, comparatively free from extremes of temperature although
winter recordings of minus 10 to 20 centigrade are not uncommon in Highland
Glens.

Scotland is a country, with a history inextricably linked (a consequence
of its close proximity) to England. During the Tour of the Country the
visitor to these pages will have the opportunity to savour some of this
history in addition to being given a feel for Scottish life both socio-economically
and anecdotally.

For ease of reading and downloading we have divided the
Tour into 3 sections, starting at Scotland's eastern border, travelling
up the East, through the Highlands and back via the South West and Central
belt.